第48章

"Look!" she commanded, placing the third before her own eyes.I peered through the stone and instantly there leaped into sight, out of thin air--six grinning dwarfs! Each was covered from top of head to soles of feet in a web so tenuous that through it their bodies were plain.The gauzy stuff seemed to vibrate--its strands to run together like quick-silver.I snatched the crystal from my eyes and--the chamber was empty! Put it back--and there were the grinning six!

Yolara gave another sign and they disappeared, even from the crystals.

"It is what they wear, Larree," explained Yolara, gra-ciously."It is something that came to us from--the Ancient Ones.But we have so few"--she sighed.

"Such treasures must be two-edged swords, Yolara,"commented O'Keefe."For how know you that one within them creeps not to you with hand eager to strike?""There is no danger," she said indifferently."I am the keeper of them."She mused for a space, then abruptly:

"And now no more.You two are to appear before the Council at a certain time--but fear nothing.You, Goodwin, go with Rador about our city and increase your wisdom.

But you, Larree, await me here in my garden--" she smiled at him, provocatively--maliciously, too."For shall not one who has resisted a world of goddesses be given all chance to worship when at last he finds his own?"She laughed--whole-heartedly and was gone.And at that moment I liked Yolara better than ever I had before and--alas--better than ever I was to in the future.

I noted Rador standing outside the open jade door and started to go, but O'Keefe caught me by the arm.

"Wait a minute," he urged."About Golden Eyes--you were going to tell me something--it's been on my mind all through that little sparring match."I told him of the vision that had passed through my closing lids.He listened gravely and then laughed.

"Hell of a lot of privacy in this place!" he grinned."Ladies who can walk through walls and others with regular invisi-ble cloaks to let 'em flit wherever they please.Oh, well, don't let it get on your nerves, Doc.Remember--every-thing's natural! That robe stuff is just camouflage of course.

But Lord, if we could only get a piece of it!""The material simply admits all light-vibrations, or per-haps curves them, just as the opacities cut them off," Ianswered."A man under the X-ray is partly invisible; this makes him wholly so.He doesn't register, as the people of the motion-picture profession say.""Camouflage," repeated Larry."And as for the Shining One--Say!" he snorted."I'd like to set the O'Keefe banshee up against it.I'll bet that old resourceful Irish body would give it the first three bites and a strangle hold and wallop it before it knew it had 'em.Oh! Wow! Boy Howdy!"I heard him still chuckling gleefully over this vision as Ipassed along the opal wall with the green dwarf.

A shell was awaiting us.I paused before entering it to examine the polished surface of runway and great road.It was obsidian--volcanic glass of pale emerald, unflawed, translucent, with no sign of block or juncture.I examined the shell.

"What makes it go?" I asked Rador.At a word from him the driver touched a concealed spring and an aperture ap-peared beneath the control-lever, of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter.Within was a small cube of black crystal, through whose sides I saw, dimly, a rapidly revolv-ing, glowing ball, not more than two inches in diameter.

Beneath the cube was a curiously shaped, slender cylinder winding down into the lower body of the Nautilus whorl.

"Watch!" said Rador.He motioned me into the vehicle and took a place beside me.The driver touched the lever; a stream of coruscations flew from the ball down into the cylinder.The shell started smoothly, and as the tiny torrent of shining particles increased it gathered speed.

"The corial does not touch the road," explained Rador.